The scattergun use of code formatting alone should have been enough to reject in my opinion, but was I wrong to think that?

The user in question has made a few similar edits recently (e.g. here and here), most of which have also been approved without dissent, so I'm wondering if my assessment was incorrect. Although elements of the edits appear appropriate, taken as a whole they should clearly, in my view, have been rejected.

My default action and comment in such cases are "rollback" and "don't use inline code to highlight random terms". It does not make the post any more readable.
– CodeCasterJul 1 '15 at 21:13

@CodeCaster well that was my initial feeling, but evidently several of my peers disagreed!
– jonrsharpeJul 1 '15 at 21:15

21

Given that you have several hundred reviews you should know better than to think that the reviewers who approved an edit like this payed close enough attention to have any idea whether the change was merited. In general, assume any given suggested edit reviewer isn't paying attention unless you've seen lots of evidence to the contrary.
– ServyJul 1 '15 at 21:16

@Servy fair point! I guess the problem, then, is that the user who suggested the edit is not getting the accurate feedback that their changes aren't useful.
– jonrsharpeJul 1 '15 at 21:18

Another instance where having a chat/comment thread specific to a review case would be useful. We could speak to this individual and let them know not to add those code backticks, problem solved. Instead, we have to make a meta thread, and stew. meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/298174/…
– Chris BakerJul 2 '15 at 15:37

3

@jonrsharpe I think the main problem is that way too many reviewers rather suck at... I mean, reviewers have inconsistent standards. We need more complex audits and general guidance for reviewers, along with notifications of (or bans for) suggestions that they approved but was ultimately rejected or rolled back. (Is there any feedback for the editors for rejected suggested edits? That would be the next way, way overdue step)
– DukelingJul 2 '15 at 16:14

Whenever I see these sorts of edits, I check the rep level of the editor, and it is usually low. Where that's the case, I rollback and explain, and if it is a high-rep user that might be more sensitive, I'll refer to them by @name and see if I can get them to change their editing approach.
– halferJul 2 '15 at 16:28

2

Disregarding the random code formatting, I would have rejected the edit simply on the basis that the post being edited is inherently off topic (asking for an off-site resource), and thus should be put on hold and deleted instead of being edited. Even a perfect edit to this question would still only waste time of the reviewers as it would have no positive impact on the site.
– l4mpiJul 3 '15 at 8:16